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Dora Winifred “D.W.” Read, the bratty, tomboy younger sister of the title character from PBS‘ long-running animated series Arthur, has only ever been voiced by boys because young girls “were just too sweet” for the role, according to the show’s voice director.
Debra Toffan, who has worked as a voice director on the animated series since it debuted in 1996, explained the decision to cast young male voice actors in the part of the bossy but protective, unicorn-loving character while being interviewed for the latest episode of the newly launched Finding D.W. podcast.
“I’ve been asked this my entire life — ‘Why is D.W. always played by a boy?'” Toffan told Finding D.W. host and former D.W. voice actor Jason Szwimer. “I think because D.W. is a rough-and-tumble little girl. She’s a little brat.”
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Toffan went on to say that personality trait relates to “that little rough voice.” But when the series first auditioned young voice actors, and in subsequent auditions to recast the character, they did “explore female voices.”
“We’ve actually tried to do girls with husky voices. We’ve come down to the wire, where you know when I’m doing the casting, we’ve come down to maybe five selects, like five of our favorites,” Toffan said. “And I’ve always, every so often, snuck a girl in there, thinking that she’s got a husky voice.”
Each time, the Arthur casting director says, their voices couldn’t quite capture the character’s rougher edge. “They were just too sweet for D.W. They’re just too nice for D.W. So we opened the search for little boys,” she said.
Those little boys were mostly between the ages of 8 and 10 “or 11, really stretching it,” Toffan said, “so their voices haven’t broken yet, and they are kind of girlish sounding, but a husky girlish sounding.”
Once the show decided that the tone and rasp of young boy’s voices best captured D.W.’s personality, the team stuck with it, ultimately casting “eight boy D.W.s.” It’s part of a long and storied history of animated voice casting, in which young girls or adult women have also been brought on to voice young boys.
The first voice actor to ever play D.W., Michael Caloz, was also interviewed during the 30-minute episode, speaking to Szwimer about what it was like auditioning for and eventually voicing the character.
While recounting his voice-acting experiences on Arthur, Caloz said he didn’t really talk about being cast in the part. As a young child who didn’t quite understand fame, he felt “there was really no need to tell someone.”
“What I can remember is that I’ve always kept it a secret until people find out about my acting in general,” he said. “At the beginning, I didn’t have that concept yet of how actors are seen in our society. They’re often idolized, kind of seen as this special type of person or something. … I think I just saw it as another fun activity or hobby.”
While the young Caloz might not have seen it as a big deal, he said the audition process very much was, according to recollections from his mother, and that while going out for a part on the PBS show, he was also up for a different Read sibling.
“I remember [my mom] said that it was a rigorous audition process and that they were looking at a lot of people,” he said. “She said that apparently I was originally considered to potentially play Arthur, and then they decided that they really wanted D.W. to be a tomboy and to have that kind of slightly more masculine voice. And so they decided I’d be a good fit for that role.”
Animation has not always cast voice actors to match their on-screen characters in age, gender or race, a practice that received increased scrutiny last year. On the podcast, Caloz said he wondered whether even he had questioned his own casting when he got the role of D.W.
“I said, ‘Mom, like, surely I must have thought this is weird, right?’ I’m this little 9-year-old kid, and being told ‘You’re gonna play a girl’ — like I must have thought that was crazy,” he recounted. “And she said, ‘No, you just kind of took it as another role to play, and you were really excited to be on TV and work on this famous book that kids loved.’ And so apparently I didn’t question it, weirdly enough.”
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